patrickgillam

pluralistic, 30 days ago to random

Fun fact: "The Tragedy Of the Commons" is a hoax created by the white nationalist Garrett Hardin to justify stealing land from colonized people and moving it from collective ownership, "rescuing" it from the inevitable tragedy by putting it in the hands of a private owner, who will care for it properly, thanks to "rational self-interest":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/04/analytical-democratic-theory/#epistocratic-delusions

1/

patrickgillam, 1 month ago to TeslaMotors

Is there an Airbnb equivalent for non-Tesla electric vehicles?

Use case: I’m driving an EV cross-country. I need to recharge. I open an app that shows me nearby residences or businesses who will let me hook my car to their charger for five or ten bucks or whatever.

Note, I am not asking whether Airbnb has listings that include charging. They do.

I’m talking about somebody who’d want to locate non-Tesla charging while traveling far from home.

Just curious.

#ev #ChargingInfrastructure

taylorlorenz, 1 month ago to random

“These emails tell a dramatic story about how Google’s finance and advertising teams, led by Raghavan with the blessing of CEO Sundar Pichai, actively worked to make Google worse to make the company more money.” https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-men-who-killed-google/

patrickgillam, 1 month ago to random

I collect distinctions between liberals and conservatives. I loved this one from Steven Brust by way of Cory Doctorow:

“‘Left’ and ‘right’ mean the same thing today that they’ve meant since the French Revolution. Ask someone, ‘What’s more important: property rights, or human rights?’ If they answer: ‘Property rights are human rights,’ they are on the right.”

—“Capitalists Hate Capitalism”

https://locusmag.com/2024/03/cory-doctorow-capitalists-hate-capitalism/

#capitalism @pluralistic

cigitalgem, 1 month ago to random

We just lost another great light of rationalism. Dan Dennett helped get me started in philosophy of mind way back in the late '80s. Dan was right about lots of things. https://dailynous.com/2024/04/19/daniel-dennett-death-1942-2024/

pluralistic, 1 month ago to random

Corporate crime is notoriously underpoliced and underprosecuted. Mostly, that's because we just choose not to do anything about it. American corporations commit crimes at 20X the rate of real humans, and their crimes are far worse than any crime committed by a human, but they are almost never prosecuted:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/12/no-criminals-no-crimes/#get-out-of-jail-free-card

1/

futurebird, 2 months ago to random

Another all too barren spring in NYC. There should be so many insects, so many ants, so many tiny creatures filling the parks, hitting the windshields of cars.

Remember when bugs used to hit the windshields of cars because the air was so full of life?

I guess most people think this is 'improvement' but they are wrong. There is a campaign to put the American bumblebee on the endangered species list!

We are living in an eerie lifeless netherworld and I don't know why more can't see it!

OldAndCranky, 3 months ago to random

I hate getting old because if you pay attention then you see that the same lies being repeated over and over again to new audiences. Those audiences sit there rapt, as if everything they hear is new.

patrickgillam, 4 months ago to random

I’m on a catch-up call with a middle-school buddy. He mentions his grandchildren are homeschooling. I can’t just leave it. I ask why. He says it started with covid. Fair enough.

Then he adds that public schools have enacted liberal policies that permit a boy, if he’s feeling feminine that day, to use the girls’ room.

I suspect a conservative’s resistance to change is not to the change per se, because they always mischaracterize it. They invent nonsense, which they of course reject.

Saltssaltgirl, 4 months ago to random

Last week I noticed a bunch of students without winter gloves

Two days ago I gave my students winter gloves

Today one of those students came in with one glove

I asked him if something happened to the glove

He said he gave one glove to his younger brother so that each of them would have one

Tomorrow I will bring more gloves

GottaLaff, 5 months ago to random

Aww! 😢 #RIP Tom Smothers, older half of Smothers Brothers, whose skits and songs on “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour” in the late 1960s brought political satire and a spirit of youthful irreverence to network television, paving the way for shows like “Saturday Night Live” and “The Daily Show,” died on Tuesday at his home at 86 “following a recent battle with cancer,” a spokesman for the National Comedy Center announced on behalf of the family. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/27/arts/television/tom-smothers-dead.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/27/arts/television/tom-smothers-dead.html?utm_source=press.coop

patrickgillam, 6 months ago to random

Capitalism guides actions today as the Church guided actions in the European Middle Ages. And just as moveable type facilitated the Church’s replacement by capitalism, social media are facilitating capitalism’s replacement. But it’s yet unclear what will replace capitalism. Just as Christianity continued into the age of capitalism, capitalism will continue into the age of what’s coming next. But capitalism will be secondary. And it may be reformed.

From: @dgar
https://aus.social/@dgar/111442696661882592

baldur, 6 months ago to random

When I see someone in tech, who is otherwise quite critical and sceptically-minded, give some tech execs the benefit of the doubt to a surprisingly great degree, they almost always turn out to have spent time with said exec in person

This isn’t a question of being biased in favour of your friends. Sometimes we’re only talking about days or even hours of time

The problem is narcissists and sociopaths are fucking charming—as long as they think you have value.

Your impressions will deceive you

fasterthanlime, 6 months ago to random

if you hit "Ctrl+K" in Powerpoint, to insert a hyperlink, you get this delightful mix of 90s and 2010s design that I assume everyone at Microsoft is afraid to touch

LillyHerself, 7 months ago to random

Capitalism in the anthropocene.

juergen_hubert, 7 months ago to random

Too many people take infrastructure for granted.

It's not even: "I don't use this, so why should I pay taxes for it?"

It's: "I am completely unaware of the tremendous, heroic efforts that are required on a day-to-day basis to keep civilization running, and me personally safe, healthy, and comfortable, and I refuse to educate myself on the subject - so why should I pay taxes for it?"

The machinery of civilization is becoming ever more complex, yet people are still crying out for "simple solutions", as if there is such a thing anywhere outside of the fevered imaginations of populists.

chad, 7 months ago to random

I’m shocked…

danielpunkass, 8 months ago to random

Ask ChatGPT "What is" a penis, a clitoris, a g spot, a labia, a scrotum, a vulva, etc. Every anatomical term relating to a man results in an answer, and every term relating to a woman yields an answer that is quickly replaced with "this content may violate our content policy." Lady parts are bad, mmkay!?

bastianallgeier, 8 months ago to random

When the effects of populism turn up in your family it’s especially scary. I shared a fact check by the Fraunhofer Institute on claims by a conservative/right CSU politician on a German TV show here yesterday. I also sent it to a family group. Afterwards a family member called me and we had a pretty long, interesting conversation about that show and the fact check.

1/

aral, 8 months ago to random

Enshittification isn’t things that were not shit becoming shit; they were always shit, you just didn’t feel it.

Surveillance capitalism isn’t some horrible corruption of capitalism, it’s just capitalism in the age of the ubiquitous digital network.

The problem isn’t things that were good becoming bad. The problem is things that have always been bad finally negatively affecting even those with bucketloads of privilege who are now attempting to explain away why they were ok with it all before.

JamesGleick, 8 months ago to random

This is Handmaid’s Tale stuff. We are the dystopia now.

I remember when even anti-abortion politicians were careful to say they would never criminalize the pregnant women. Now Nebraska is imprisoning a mother who helped her teenage daughter with an abortion pill.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/sep/22/burgess-abortion-pill-nebraska-mother-daughter

anneapplebaum, 8 months ago to random

The majority of Americans continue to support Ukraine, want the US government to continue military and financial aid to Ukraine, recognize that Russia has genocidal policies in Ukraine and want Ukraine to defeat Russia.

TV people! Please stop asking Zelensky (and me, and everyone else) about what happens when Americans will "get tired" of Ukraine, and ask them instead to explain why support for Ukraine continues to hold, which is more interesting and rather remarkable

Green_Footballs, 8 months ago to random

Meanwhile in Missouri, Republicans set a pile of books on fire with flamethrowers, screaming, “Let’s go Brandon!”

Flamethrowers.